---
title: "Self-Hotpot, \"Can't Get Excited\" Anymore"
description: "In May 2026, Hangzhou Golden Antelope Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd., affiliated with the self-heating food brand Self-Hotpot, entered bankruptcy liquidation. Once a viral brand that sold 5 million cups in 10 minutes and was valued at 7.5 billion yuan, it now faces over 140 million yuan in enforced payments, with founder Cai Hongliang subject to 17 consumption restriction orders. From its launch in 2018 to its decline in 2026, Self-Hotpot lasted only eight years. The era of \"half the entertainment industry eating Self-Hotpot\" seems like yesterday, yet now the Taobao flagship store offers clearance prices of 24 yuan for 3 boxes, and the comment sections are filled with complaints about \"bad taste,\" \"small portions,\" and \"foreign objects.\""
author: "葛畅"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-05-11"
categories: "Brand Marketing"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/self-hotpot-can-t-get-excited-anymore-91aaaaa0.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/b62Iml4e1QocvK0yEzSjvA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E8%87%AA%E5%97%A8%E9%94%85-%E5%97%A8-%E4%B8%8D%E5%8A%A8%E4%BA%86-91aaaaa0.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/self-hotpot-can-t-get-excited-anymore-91aaaaa0/"
citation: "葛畅. “Self-Hotpot, \"Can't Get Excited\" Anymore.” New Distribution, 2026-05-11. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/self-hotpot-can-t-get-excited-anymore-91aaaaa0/"
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---

# Self-Hotpot, "Can't Get Excited" Anymore

> In May 2026, Hangzhou Golden Antelope Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd., affiliated with the self-heating food brand Self-Hotpot, entered bankruptcy liquidation. Once a viral brand that sold 5 million cups in 10 minutes and was valued at 7.5 billion yuan, it now faces over 140 million yuan in enforced payments, with founder Cai Hongliang subject to 17 consumption restriction orders. From its launch in 2018 to its decline in 2026, Self-Hotpot lasted only eight years. The era of "half the entertainment industry eating Self-Hotpot" seems like yesterday, yet now the Taobao flagship store offers clearance prices of 24 yuan for 3 boxes, and the comment sections are filled with complaints about "bad taste," "small portions," and "foreign objects."

In May 2026, Hangzhou Golden Antelope Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd., affiliated with the self-heating food brand Self-Hotpot, entered bankruptcy liquidation. Once a viral brand that sold 5 million cups in 10 minutes and was valued at 7.5 billion yuan, it now faces over 140 million yuan in enforced payments, with founder Cai Hongliang subject to 17 consumption restriction orders.

From its launch in 2018 to its decline in 2026, Self-Hotpot lasted only eight years.

The era of "half the entertainment industry eating Self-Hotpot" seems like yesterday, yet now the Taobao flagship store offers clearance prices of 24 yuan for 3 boxes, and the comment sections are filled with complaints about "bad taste," "small portions," and "foreign objects," painting its true ending.

Why did this representative of "eating alone," once favored by celebrities and wildly recommended by young people, suddenly stop "getting excited"?

**Marketing Spend**
**Building a False Boom**

Cai Hongliang, founder of Self-Hotpot, previously founded the snack brand Be & Cheery. In 2016, he sold Be & Cheery to Haoxiangni for 960 million yuan, and in 2018, he founded Self-Hotpot.

This time, he continued the familiar internet playbook: heavy marketing, grabbing traffic, and quickly building buzz.

In the early days, out of 80 million yuan in startup capital, 50 million was directly invested in marketing. Celebrity endorsements, variety show sponsorships, elevator ads, Xiaohongshu seeding, Korean drama product placements... covering almost all high-frequency touchpoints of young people. Combined with the boom in livestream e-commerce, Self-Hotpot quickly became a viral food product.

In a short time, the massive marketing spend did quickly drive sales.

> In 2018, Self-Hotpot's Tmall flagship store achieved the No.1 sales in its category within just 24 hours of launch;
>
> During the 2020 Double 11 shopping festival, sales exceeded 100 million yuan in 21 minutes;
>
> In Xin Ba's livestream, 5 million cups were sold in 10 minutes.

Capital quickly followed. Between 2018 and 2021, Self-Hotpot completed five rounds of financing, raising over 550 million yuan in total, with its valuation soaring to 7.5 billion yuan.

But problems soon emerged: Self-Hotpot never established truly stable repeat purchases.

Marketing can drive the first order, but it struggles to solve the question of "do you want to eat it a second time?" Compared to Haidilao's self-heating hotpot repeat purchase rate of 25%-30%, Self-Hotpot's has long been below 15%.

Meanwhile, marketing costs kept rising.

From 2020 to 2021, Self-Hotpot's sales expenses reached 293 million yuan and 432 million yuan, respectively. Marketing expenses consistently exceeded 25% of revenue, sometimes approaching 40%, while R&D investment accounted for less than 1.3%. This meant its growth was highly dependent on continuous spending.

More critically, the high marketing investment was like a bottomless pit—in 2020 and 2021, the company lost 151 million yuan and 313 million yuan, respectively. Self-Hotpot fell into the dilemma of "the more it sells, the more it loses."

It wasn't until 2022, when the company significantly cut marketing expenses, that it barely turned a profit of 27.52 million yuan. But the cost was a 17.34% drop in revenue, a rapid decline in buzz, and a cliff-like fall in sales.

This is a typical problem for viral brands: they run too fast on traffic but fail to build a reason for users to stay. As the marketing heat faded, Self-Hotpot's product issues began to surface one by one.

**Product Failures**
**Losing Consumer Trust and Favor**

A search for "Self-Hotpot" on social platforms reveals a flood of negative reviews concentrated on a few issues: expensive, bad taste, and small portions.

Take the spicy beef hotpot, for example. It sells for nearly 40 yuan, but the actual meat content is limited, with more meatballs, starchy vegetables, and side dishes. "The packaging is big, but when you open it, there's not much inside," is a common sentiment among consumers.

Once the novelty wears off, consumers naturally compare: for the same 30-plus yuan, you can order a steaming bowl of spicy malatang, a rice dish, or even a small hotpot, with more flavor choices and faster delivery. Why choose a mediocre-tasting self-heating hotpot?

More importantly, the "convenience" of self-heating food has clear limitations.

Self-heating hotpots require cold water, heating time, and produce a lot of steam. They are explicitly banned on high-speed trains, airplanes, and other enclosed spaces. Some netizens report that using them in dormitories can trigger smoke alarms; others say the food is still undercooked after heating and needs to be cooked again.

The product, originally promoted as "convenient in all scenarios," ended up in the awkward position of being inedible in many places and not actually convenient.

What further damaged the brand's reputation were food safety issues.

On the Black Cat complaint platform, there are over 600 complaints about Self-Hotpot, involving foreign objects, mold, spoilage, and more. For a food brand, each such incident directly erodes consumer trust.

In 2023, a consumer in Liangshan, Sichuan, allegedly died after eating Self-Hotpot's clams and vermicelli. Although the final judicial appraisal did not fully confirm a direct causal link with the product, public opinion quickly escalated.

At this point, a normal company would respond actively and handle the situation properly. But Self-Hotpot's actions stunned everyone—it launched a "Fortune-Making Clam Vermicelli" on its flagship store priced at 1.76 million yuan, using the victim's family's compensation claim as a marketing gimmick. Ultimately, regulators deemed this "contrary to social morality" and fined the company 800,000 yuan.

Many young consumers are willing to accept brands that joke around or self-deprecate, but only if the brand shows basic respect. For a food brand, once consumer trust and favor are lost, traffic is unlikely to convert into real sales.

Not to mention, the industry tailwind that had supported Self-Hotpot's rapid growth had long since dissipated.

**Dividends Fade**
**Operational Weaknesses Amplified**

Self-Hotpot's explosion was itself a product of the era's dividends.

Around 2020, under special circumstances, demand for home consumption surged, delivery was restricted, and restaurants closed. Self-heating food, which requires "no fire or electricity," suddenly became a necessity. In those years, self-heating food quickly moved from a niche category to the mass market.

But Cai Hongliang mistook the trend for his own capability and launched aggressive expansion during the dividend period. Products expanded from hotpot to rice, noodles, barbecue... SKUs increased rapidly; at the same time, he invested heavily in supply chain, building 15 factories nationwide with a cumulative investment of up to 2 billion yuan, attempting to transform from a traffic-driven brand into a comprehensive food brand.

This expansion was based on the premise that sales would continue to grow.

But after 2022, life returned to normal, delivery services flourished again, and demand for self-heating food cooled significantly.

By the fourth quarter of 2024, the self-heating hotpot category saw a year-on-year decline of 25.05% in growth, 29.18% in units sold, and 32.67% in sales value. The entire industry was shrinking, and Self-Hotpot could hardly stay immune.

Meanwhile, the competitive environment worsened. Traditional hotpot brands like Haidilao and Xiaolongkan, leveraging mature supply chains and brand trust, launched more cost-effective self-heating products. On the other hand, a large number of white-label products engaged in price wars on low-price platforms, with self-heating hotpots selling for as little as 3-5 yuan. This category, with almost no entry barriers, became a battleground for white-label brands.

Self-Hotpot's 15 factories, invested in earlier, became a burden after sales halved. Idle capacity, fixed asset depreciation, and labor costs began to erode cash flow. In 2024, the company was forced to pay 11.25 million yuan in overdue advertising fees to Focus Media, revealing its cash flow problems.

This seemingly small debt directly tore open the veil of the company's broken capital chain. It's worth noting that Focus Media's elevator ads were the very tool that sparked the "self-heating craze" in office buildings in major cities like Hangzhou. Not being able to repay even its "comrade-in-arms" shows the company was running on empty.

In short, traffic and trends once pushed Self-Hotpot to its peak, but as its product and operational weaknesses were amplified, they ultimately accelerated its downfall.

## Final Thoughts

The FMCG industry has never lacked products that "suddenly become popular."

They excel at telling stories, creating buzz, and quickly capturing young people's attention. But the real challenge is never short-term buzz; it's why consumers would choose to stay after the hype fades.

Traffic can quickly create bestsellers, and capital can rapidly scale up, but what determines how far a food brand can go is still the most basic question—product strength.

Often, the industry tends to overestimate short-term bursts and underestimate those seemingly common-sense, fundamental capabilities. After all, consumers may not always chase a viral brand, but they will definitely repeatedly choose a reliable product.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 葛畅
- Published: 2026-05-11
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/self-hotpot-can-t-get-excited-anymore-91aaaaa0/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/b62Iml4e1QocvK0yEzSjvA

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